British “equal value” lawsuits have become an absurd denial of markets
The gavel takes on the invisible hand
The decision came, as awkward news tends to, late on a Friday. The employment court had been asked to rule not so much on matters of law as on matters of the market: what is value, and who works equal amounts of it? Tens of thousands of workers (most of them female) in stores were suing Asda, a supermarket, for being paid less than their colleagues (most of them male) in warehouses, on the basis that their work was of “equal value”.
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This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “The gavel versus the invisible hand”
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